WARNING!
This official U.N. document contains description of some graphic torture.
This material is NOT recomended for young
children to read...

Only sick Croat minds could
do these kinds of things... Their behavior could only be explained by the
fact that the historical rooths of bestiality in the Croat nation are deep.

How to obtain this document:
This is a PUBLIC document. You can obtain it by calling U.N. Public Inquiry
Office at (212) 963-4475. You should know the document numbers (here: A/47/813
and S/24991) as well as the document title ("Deposition of Serbian women...").

You can also stop by room
GA57, basement of the U.N. Building, New York, corner of 46th Street and
1st Ave., and ask for the document.

SECURITY COUNCIL

Distribution:
GENERAL

A/47/813

S/24991

18 December
1992

ORIGINAL: English

Depositions of Serbian women given to the State Commission
for War Crimes

The
exchanged women confirmed rumours of the abuse of women and children who
were ethnic hostages in Novi Grad. "Eight men came one night around 11
p.m.", said one of the exchanged women. "They were half drunk and they
beat us all. They took out two girls, L.D. (15) and S.D. (21), and raped
them both.

"It
was a group of some 10 boys from Posavska Mahala and the surrounding villages
who called themselves 'horses of fire'. I knew most of them personally.
In particular, Marijan Brnic. I implored, I begged him to let me go, reminding
him of his past neighbourly relations with my family. He told me to be
glad that he was alone since the procedure was different with others. Five
or six on one girl. They pulled my friend B.N. (19) by the hair, beat her
and put a knife to her throat when she tried to break free. She was raped
by two of the group. The rest were dispersed by police to prevent them
from molesting us again, all of Posavska Mahala was on its feet. They threatened
to come and set fire to all of us and Novi Grad if the boys were not released.
Police let them go. The rapings continued", says Z.M.(22), one of the raped
girls.

They
came at night, half intoxicated, some of them even drugged. They put women
onto trucks and took them away, returning them at sunrise, naked and tormented.
They also took women who had small children. Some of the women who could
not muster courage to get out of the forest in which they were raped" describe
their pain, women who wanted by stay anonymous but who are ready to witness
in a court of law. A 10-year-old girl, M.L., was raped in Novi Grad. This
grave crime was committed by Mate Burugdzic from the village of Pecnik.
"I was taken away half an hour past midnight. There were six of them. I
was abused and treated foully by all of them.. They told me: 'You have
to give birth to a little Ustasha!'. For days thereafter I roamed around
like mad hiding in the forest", says ...P. from Novi Grad.

Bretelj
Detention Camp, Capljina

In an
article published in the Slobodno Nevesinje newspaper (No. 6 of 20. September
1992), a witness to the Bretelj hell confirmed rumours about the raping
of Serb women and girls. "Women who were not so many in the camp as men
were subjected to brutal torture and humiliated. I can say that they were
raped in front of their other inmates, even their detained relatives. That
was awful."

The
Tarcin area

Physical
torture to which Serbs from this area have been subjected by Muslims is
particularly brutal. Serb women are charged with possession of radio stations
and keeping war journals. They are arrested on these charges and physically
and mentally abused and humiliated. A woman from the village of Ferhatlije,
near Pazaric, committed suicide after such torture. Particularly notorious
are Nijaz Lihovac called Tera, Mirsad Sabic called Mirso and Muhamed Turcinovic
called Zeko, former police officer of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia
and Herzegovina.

Analysis
of the medical-psychological examinations of one group of people released
through the exchange of prisoners

I. INTRODUCTION

A team
of experts from the Institute for Mental Health and Military Psychology
at the Military Medical Academy, made up of two physicians- neuropsychiatrists
and two psychologists, examined the whole group of people released through
the exchange of prisoners. The group of 380 members of the Croatian paramilitary
formations was returned in exchange for this group of 41 prisoners. The
exchange took place on 27 March 1992, and the medical- psychological examinations
were made on 28 March 1992.

Our
purpose was both to establish their actual psycho-physical conditions and
determine all the forms of brutal physical and mental treatment and violence
on the basis of general medical examinations, semi-standardized psychological-psychiatric
interviews and verbal statements of the prisoners examined.

II.
BASIC DEMOGRAPHIC AND OTHER IMPORTANT DATA

All
the prisoners from the group exchanged were of the average age of 48. The
youngest was 24 and the oldest 73. There were 5 women with an average age
of 44, out of which 4 were housewives and 1 an unqualified worker. Among
the male members of the group, most of them were farmers, workers, pensioners,
two technicians and one professor, among which 9 were members of the Armed
Forces - 4 Territorial Defence members, 2 volunteers (aged 37 and 62),
2 reservists and 1 JNA Junior Officer. They were arrested between 6 November
1991 and 13 March 1992.

The
circumstances under which these people were deprived of their liberty were
different, ranging from those most common - in their houses while watching
television, or in the streets - to even more unusual, on the highway on
their return from a wedding (R.P., aged 42)
or on their way back to the village from the medical examination (B.C.,
aged 73 suffering from an ulcer). Some of them were abused by the Croatian
Ministry of the Interior (B.B., aged 66) or captured in the field while
gathering corn (K.T., aged 57) or plums (I.S., aged 56). The only JNA [Yugoslav
Federal Army] member, a junior officer (Z.S., aged 49), a Serb, married
to a Croatian woman, was arrested on his leave, while sleeping.

Almost
all the prisoners, after being interrogated for 3 to 10 days in Vinkovci,
Sisak, Slavonska Orahovica, Slavonska Pozega, Podravska Slatina, Djakovo,
Novska, Nasice, etc. [all in Croatia], were taken to prisoner camps in
Osijek or Zagreb (in Zagreb to Kerestinac and Gaj). The most brutal and
cruel physical and mental treatment by depriving them even of their basic
physiological needs (water, food, sleep, movement) was committed during
the "inquiry". Throughout their captivity, they were exposed to some more
mild forms of physical, mental and social torture. Torturing
continued even on the buses, on the way from the prison in Osijek to the
determined point of exchange. That was testified
by the case of T.R., aged 32, and J.M., aged 55, who got fresh bloody swellings
in the region of the right cheek-bone, i.e. lower jaw.

III.
MOST FREQUENT FORMS OF PHYSICAL TREATMENT

Classification
into physical and psychological, i.e. psycho-social, forms of treatment
is of a relative character, because these forms cannot be easily distinguished,
one from the others. Some of the most often forms of physical torture registered
are:

- deprivation
of basic physiological needs, for instance, leaving prisoners five days
without water and food or forbidding them
to relieve themselves while being tied to hot radiators (I.S., aged 56);

- hitting
the heads of the prisoners against the wall until they faint
(B.B., aged 66);

- electrocution
with electro shocks, electric wires tied to the wrists in the region of
the neck, heavy thigh and even to the genitals;

- "coming
to life" of fainted prisoners by brutal physical torture, for instance
by pouring vinegar, brandy or even urine into the mouth;

- kicking
prisoners with boots while lying on the concrete, blindfolded as not to
see faces of their torturers;

- "demonstration"
of gouging the eyes of Serbs by sticking fingers
into the eye sockets;

- permanent
jumping from a bench or a table onto the stomachs of the victims lied on
their back on the concrete, until they get hernia (K.T., aged 53, with
a hernia large as a human head; C.M., aged 42, with a bit smaller hernia);

- tying
men with spread legs and beating them with truncheons on the genitals;

- raping
of women with their arms and legs tied in
a so-called "black room" for days
(M.R., aged 38, lost 25 kg for three months);

- stripping
them naked and beating them with boots, truncheons
until they faint;

- extinguishing
butts of cigarettes into the mouth of victims,
forcing them to swallow them;

- swallowing
extinguished butts previously plunged into urine;

- chaining
the left arm to the left leg (Z.M., aged 43);

- trampling
with both legs, fixing the neck with one leg and kicking in the region
of the heart with the other one;

- nailing
handcuffed prisoners to a fixed hook on a
wall, then beating till the loss of consciousness and leaving them in a
such position;

- trampling
with boots upon the surgical scar from the operation for gastric ulcer
(operated on 10 November, arrested on 30 December 1991, D.N., aged 38);

- putting
bags over the head, roping around the neck, knocking down to the concrete
and then savagely kicking with boots, truncheons, etc.;

- striking
on the head with a big metal ladle of 1 m until they faint;

- striking
with a "hammer" made of 1-2 kg salt folded in a sheet, knotted and plunged
into water so as to gain in weight;

- tying
to a tree, in winter at -15 degrees C [+4 degrees F] and watering prisoners
in order to hasten their freezing;

- carrying
bags full of sand from one side of the camp to the other without any reason
under threats: "Who told you to do that, take it back!", without any end
to it;

- forcing
to relieve themselves in the room where they sleep, on the floor because
there are no buckets;

- forcing
to take shower with cold and hot water alternately so as to suffer burns;

- tying
prisoners to a tree for two days and nights in snow in winter, depriving
them of water and food and beating them (N.G., aged 35, permanently relieved
from military duty because of illness);

- cutting
ears with a knife and forcing prisoners to lick knives under threats of
being slaughtered;

- carving
the skin on the back with a knife and pouring salt in a wound;

- beating
with steel cable on the bare feet;

- there
is a case when torturers started to slaughter a prisoner (D.N., aged 42)
when, by accident, he was saved by the Commander of the Ministry of the
Interior, his school friend from the elementary school.

IV.
MOST FREQUENT FORMS OF MENTAL ILL-TREATMENT

The
forms of mental ill-treatment ranged from bullying, threats, blackmail,
recruitment and humiliation to brutal maltreatment, homosexual and heterosexual
abuse. We present herewith the most frequent forms of mental ill-treatment:

- putting
the pistol barrel into the prisoner's mouth and a knife under his neck
threatening him that he would be "killed as all members of his family had
already been"'

- prisoners
were told that their children had been already slaughtered;
that it was their turn; that that was the way of "solving the Chetniks
problem"; - the prisoners were forced to cross themselves and to bow down
with curses before the photo of S. Milosevic;

- the
prisoners were forced to masturbate before
Tito's picture;

- "night
dances" - the prisoners were forced to dance
with the music turned on loudly and in the presence of drunken Ustashes.
During the dance the male and female prisoners
were half naked so to be "stimulated". Afterwards they went to the dark
room where the torturers raped the young female prisoners,
whose arms and legs were tied and stretched;

- the
group of male prisoners was forced to masturbate in front of the half-naked
older female prisoners. This was followed by the brutal verbal humiliation
and music which add to the physical and psychological ill-treatment;

- the
young female prisoners were forced to swallow the sperm of 10 to 12 Ustashes
[Nazi Croats];

- the
young male prisoner was requested to make oral sex on an older male person;

- anal
heterosexual intercourse with a victim who was then forced to make oral
sex and to swallow the sperm;

- group
masturbation; then a wife of one prisoner was forced to make oral sex on
a prisoner while her husband was watching;

- "special
dance" - naked male and female prisoners were forced to dance permanently
for 4 to 5 hours until completely exhausted and then they underwent the
"process of reanimation";

- "games
without frontiers" - the prisoners were carrying plates with hot water
on their heads and then forced to run so that the water could splash out
and cause the burns;

- the
prisoner was requested to write a statement, several pages long and then
to eat it (C.M., 44 years old);

- a
prisoner was made to move on his hands and elbows while another one was
riding him. While doing this they had to repeat permanently: "Zivjela vjecna
Hrvatska" (Long live the everlasting Croatia!) but if they pronounced the
word "zivjela" in a different way (like "zivila" or"zivela") they underwent
additional ill-treatment;

- the
prisoners were questioned: "Who is the Croat?" The answer was: "Sir". "Who
is the Serb?" - "The gypsy";

- the
prisoners were shown the tapes with the massacred wounded persons and corpses
in order to see "what Chetniks do to the Croats";

- the
prisoners were made to sing some new songs like "Milan Martic, the son
of a bitch";

- the
prisoners were requested to say the evening prayer: "Mother of Lord, the
Serbian vagina wishes you good night ...";

- "riddles":
How can you hold your ears with one hand? The answer: "This can be done
if an Ustasha cut one of your ears and put it in your hand";

- deliberate
exposure to death (P.N., 36 years old, together with other prisoners, was
sent into the streets of Osijek to collect the garbage while vigorous combat
was in course. The Ustashas with snipers watched them in order to prevent
them from finding shelter);

- the
prisoners were put in chains and taken from one restaurant to another presented
as "Milosevic's Chetniks";

- while
grinding the bullet in front of the prisoner (J.N., 51 years old) the torturer
explained that the death would be easier for him;

- the
prisoner (M.C., 38 years old) was forced to sing "Lily Marlene".

V. PHYSICAL
AND MENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE ILL-TREATMENT

By the
medical check-up we found the following: fresh blood bruises on lower jaw,
cheek-bones, hand, wrists where there were also scars made by hanging the
victims with handcuffs on their hands on hooks fixed in the wall, scars
on the hand, wrists, necks and legs made by electric devices.

Difficulties
in opening the mouth were also registered as the prisoner's broken jaw
was not treated medically (T.M., 38 years old). In fact, this prisoner
refused the surgery intervention in Zagreb for fear of being killed. Two
large hernias were found caused by the ill-treatment as described in the
above text. The patients suffer from pains in the chest, they expectorate
lymph, there are traces of blood in their urine and stool. There are visible
scars on the forehead and other parts of the prisoners' heads which are
obviously the result of cuts made by a sharp object. The patients complained
of pains in the back, chest, breasts and wrists.

The
persons that underwent the medical check-up expressed, although they had
been exposed to prolonged strong stress situations and humiliation, mature
consideration for their own state and unexpected mental resistance to intensity
and duration of stress events. Some of them expressed even some sort of
pride that they "did not knuckle under pressure". Some of the patients
were given the necessary medicaments and it was suggested that they undergo
other necessary medical treatment. We must point out that the medical check-ups
were completed in the morning hours some 15 hours after the exchange. Owing
to this fact it is possible to expect some delayed reactions to stress
as post-trauma stress disturbance. Because of this it is necessary to continue
with following the psychological adaptability of the patients as well as
to undertake available mental-hygiene and medical measures.

VI.
CONCLUSION

The
analysis of the medical and psychological check-ups of one group of prisoners
released by exchange exposed the fact that those individuals had been exposed
to severe physical torture, ill-treatment and criminal activities.

The
psychological ill-treatment was directed at destroying the motivation regarding
safety, self-confidence and affiliation. At the same time the torturers
tried to develop with the prisoners the feeling of uncertainty, helplessness,
fear, anxiety and even the feeling of losing one's own identity.

Social
pressure was directed at degradation of personality by destroying basic
human dignity. The characteristics of the psycho-social ill-treatment were
animal hatred against the victim, sadism up to bestiality and extreme cruelty.

We consider
such treatment of prisoners as a crime against humanity and that it is
necessary to inform the domestic and international public of this fact
so as to observe all this in the light of international war law and conventions
regarding prisoners of war and victims of war in general.

We suggest
that a medical check-up of other groups of released prisoners bedone, especially
of the Armed Forces personnel, by the team of doctors - forensic specialists,
neuro-psychiatrists and psychologists.